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I feel sorry for the books I read immediately after Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb novels, as they have so much to live up to. I read Thrust either side of Nona the Ninth, which made it feel more disjointed than it otherwise would have. As the narrative darts around in time quite mysteriously, it's already pretty disjointed. Yuknavitch knits it all together via material objects and kinky sex. The settings are striking: the Statue of Liberty under construction, future drowned Manhattan, a 19th century BDSM club, a 20th century juvenile detention centre, and a magical sea. As with another novel by Yuknavitch that I enjoyed, The Book of Joan, Thrust is preoccupied with embodiment and combines elements of sci-fi and fantasy. Both are probably best described as weird fiction.

I find Yuknavitch a distinctive and interesting writer. Her novels aren't very plot focused, sometimes to the point of incoherence, but I find her writing vivid and visceral and her ideas striking and original. She's good at exploring disability, sexuality, and resistance to exploitation via strange and fantastical concepts. Thrust takes about sixty pages to get going and once it does the melange of characters and settings become compelling. While some elements work better than others, certain images and scenes are truly memorable.